Word: pyrrhic
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...huge boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it roll down again, to the end of time. But from this recognition Camus drew his own peculiar sustenance: "Crushing truths perish by being acknowledged," i.e., knowledge of one's absurd fate is a kind of Pyrrhic victory over absurdity...
Incest with her father, however, has left Cressida with a guilty conscience and she feels unworthy of Troilus, until he proves his love in bed. Love's victory is Pyrrhic, however, and Cressida soon succumbs to a Prince of Greece, who can provide security and a house in Connecticut. The Greek is nevertheless the tool of Mars, who is the real villain, and provides the climax, which is tragic for Ashton and perhaps slightly comic for the audience...
...Silberstein does succeed in his goal-electing six directors to the eleven-man Fairbanks, Morse board-his victory might yet be Pyrrhic. Penn-Texas may control Fairbanks, Morse, but since Illinois law requires a two-thirds vote of shares for corporate merger, the Morse family holdings are enough to block any real union between the two companies. Moreover, if F-M stock drops after Silberstein wins-and Morse himself says it is much too high-the Morse-financed Landa committee may yet put Silberstein in hot water at Penn-Texas' own meeting in May by confronting him with some...
Timofey Pnin is a Russian émigré professor who has won a Pyrrhic victory over the English language. His name itself is a sneeze in search of a vowel. His colleagues at a small Eastern college can make out Pnin's pastoral odes to "Tsentral Park," but few realize that "I search for the viscous and sawdust" is a request for whisky and soda. Devoted to the active verb and the present tense, Pnin invests the simplest acts with explosive vitality ("I never go in a hat even in winter"). In all verbal matters, Pnin would rather...
...handsome Communist so crafty and devious that he hoodwinks Moto into arresting Rhyce as a spy. There is an even more startling difference: in the prewar Moto stories, the clean-cut American usually won the lovable American girl. In the new book, Jack Rhyce wins only a Pyrrhic victory-the Communists are thwarted, but Ruth Bogart, Rhyce's true love and fellow secret agent, is killed. Clearly, Marquand's Americans have passed many a point of no return-in Tokyo as well as in Clyde, Mass...